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Selection for the Worlds 2019

I think that it is appropriate that I explain the reasoning behind this season’s selection system-

The committee's aim was to introduce a system that was fair, objective and based on a number of competitions, but allowing fencers to be able to qualify without having to compete in all the competitions. It is important to realise that we are not implementing a scheme to find the best fencer, (that is the role of the ranking system), just the strongest 4 fencers to compete in the World championships.

We also wanted to include a range of competitions which would include the BVF Nationals, the Age groups and the Europeans.

It is difficult to come up with some form of multiplying factor to compare results from various formats of competition. If we take the Age groups as a baseline, then the ‘value’ of a result in the Nationals will vary according to the category. For example, if a cat 4 fencer comes 5th, that is a better result than if a cat 1 fencer comes 5th. In the Europeans the standard is clearly higher than in the Age groups. However the difference in standards for both the Europeans and the Age groups is a subjective factor that would probably be different for each weapon, category and gender. It is clearly impossible to come up with a multiplying factor that is both objective and fair.

For these reasons we decided to separate the results of each age group from each competition. In this manner we would be comparing the results between the members of each age category as a separate group. The standard of the competition would not be a significant factor. However to enable this to work, we would need the majority of the contenders for the team to be competing in each competition. This is one of the reasons why we have restricted the qualification system to count the best 2 results from 3 competitions. I would expect a significant number of team contenders from each category to be competing in all 3 competitions.